Wheels of Death / Venezuela outraged over fatalities in Firestone-equipped Fords

Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, September 9, 2000

2000-09-09 04:00:00 PDT Caracas, Venezuela -- After he got the phone call informing him of his son's death, Miguel Angel Sanguino did his sad duty.

He rushed to the mountain highway where the Ford Explorer had blown a tire and overturned, killing his 30-year-old son, Ivan, and a passenger, and he accompanied the corpse to the morgue.

And when Sanguino went to the impound lot where the wrecked vehicle had been towed, he felt another jolt of horror. It was an Explorer graveyard.

"It was very awful to go to that lot where the vehicle was and find more than a dozen wrecked Explorers," said Sanguino, 54, a stocky businessman with an air of desolate dignity. "The same day of my son's accident, another Explorer had a fatal crash. It's as if a killer is in the street causing violent deaths of innocent people. I can't say who the killer is, but I know he exists."

Venezuela has experienced an alarming number of accidents blamed on failures of Firestone tires on Ford Explorers, recording at least 47 deaths compared with an estimated 69 in the United States.

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In the month since the death of Ivan Sanguino, the anguish and outrage of Venezuelans have echoed well beyond the borders of this South American nation of 24 million. An aggressive government response to the accidents has fueled the international uproar engulfing Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone.

This week, Venezuelan prosecutors opened a criminal investigation based on a hard-hitting report by government consumer watchdogs who accuse the companies of conspiring to conceal the problems and say they share the blame.

Wilderness tires and Explorer vehicles are produced at plants in the industrial city of Valencia for sale in the region.

Under tightened scrutiny, Ford said this week it has replaced 62 percent of an estimated 140,700 Explorer tires scrutiny in Venezuela in a recall that began in May. Bridgestone announced Monday that it will replace 62,000 Venezuelan-made tires on vehicles other than Explorers.

Nonetheless, the two companies heatedly contest the government watchdogs' findings, which under Venezuelan law could result in involuntary homicide charges against company executives. Ford, in particular, rejects a potentially explosive allegation: that a design flaw in the Explorer's suspension played a key role in crashes.

In response, Ford officials propose the formation of a "high-level technical commission." They question the depth of the two-month Venezuelan probe, noting that more experienced, better-funded U.S. safety agencies are still at work.

The self-styled Davids taking on the corporate Goliaths work for the Institute for the Defense and Education of Consumers and Users (INDECU), which handles complaints about everything from food safety to bad service in hotels.

Jorge Dominguez, the gregarious chief of the agency's 26 inspectors, carries a badge with the number 007, a humorous gift from the agency's chief, Samuel Ruh.

Both are staunch supporters of populist President Hugo Chavez. They claim to have cleaned up a den of lethargy and graft in which former bosses used their jobs to get rich and kept a staff of 12 chauffeurs for two vehicles.

In contrast, Dominguez said his inspectors have worked around the clock on the Ford/Firestone affair and refuse to be intimidated. He scoffs at the understandable doubts about the watchdogs' credentials: Dominguez is an agronomist, Ruh is a lawyer and former congressman, and their technical expert is a former race car driver and tire salesman.

The case is big but not necessarily that complicated, Ruh said in an interview this week.

"The prosecutor said that after seeing the documentation, the investigation, the case seemed extremely easy to investigate," Ruh said. "We are very calm. We have not said anything that we cannot prove."

Sport-utility vehicles are popular in a region with big families and rough roads. And Venezuela has an especially rich car culture because the once-wealthy nation is among the world's top oil producers.

Despite the economic collapse of the last 20 years, Venezuelans still treasure their cars. It helps that gas is cheaper than water in this country.

Venezuela is Ford's fourth-biggest market in Latin America. Explorers have been built here since 1996 and sell for about $25,000. Venezuelans own most of the estimated 30,000 Explorers currently on the roads in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador.

As reconstructed by the INDECU report, the tragedy has its roots in 1995, when Firestone began producing Wilderness ATX tires at its Valencia plant. Two years later, according to the report, Ford made the tires standard on Explorers here.

By 1998, Ford became aware of accidents related to Wilderness tires in Venezuela and requested a report from Firestone, which conducted an investigation and found no design or production problems, according to Ford officials. Continuing accidents prompted another probe in which Firestone technicians in the United States examined Venezuelan tires and concluded that the causes were external factors such as bad roads, Ford says.

The Venezuelan safety officials allege that deceptive conduct by the companies began in 1998. After "absolutely secret" meetings, according to the report, officials agreed in early 1999 to reinforce suspect tires with a fifth layer of nylon to prevent tread separation. The redesign plan proceeded "while Ford Explorer mini-trucks circulated with uninformed and unprotected drivers who had no idea of the danger," the report said.

In a twist that the watchdogs call both strange and sinister, however, thousands of tires labeled as reinforced actually did not have the fifth protective layer. Ford has expressed concern about the quality of the tires and the mislabeling.

Corporate officials say that the redesign was neither secret nor conspiratorial. The mislabeling was an innocent "stamping error," according to Firestone, which insists the tires were safe, regardless.

Ford officials, moreover, bristle at the allegation that its vehicle has a "soft" and "highly unstable" suspension, as the report claims. Venezuelan safety officials accuse Ford of making surreptitious attempts to prevent rollovers by encouraging Explorer owners to install tougher shock absorbers and inflate tires to four pounds less pressure than the level recommended by Firestone.

Otherwise, though, the debate has not produced a solid explanation for the apparently high rate of accidents here, at least 74 in all. The warm climate seems to have been a factor, as in the United States, Ruh says.

Prosecutors plan to question executives and visit factories before making a decision whether to file charges, which could come within about a month, according to consumer officials. In addition, the consumer agency can impose fines.

Sanguino does not yearn to see anyone in handcuffs. But one way or another, in Venezuela or in the United States or both, he hopes for something that is often elusive in Latin America: justice.

"If any company or individual was responsible, it's obvious that they should feel the full weight of the law," he said. "This has been a massacre. It has to stop."